Thursday, July 06, 2006

Excellence in Customer Service

There is a great post entitled 20 points on excellent library customer service over at Blog about Libraries that I think everyone who works in libraries ought to read - maybe even daily. Work often gets complicated and frustrating - insufficient resources, insufficient human capital, broken equipment, not enough equipment, etc. - and these are only the problems that I’ve had to deal with in this short work week that started yesterday. When one is frustrated, the often patron becomes the enemy. This makes it difficult to keep a smile on one’s face - and to be helpful. Every once in a while, we all need these reminders. This reminder certainly helped me put my work frustrations into their proper place today!

And by the way, I don’t think that these lessons are just important to libraries - especially points #4 Follow the Golden Rule, always and #9 Be professional; take customer service seriously (I think they are just as important in our day-to-day lives). Customer service is almost non-existent in today’s society. Our society has an alarming tendency to blame the customer for problems. Everyone could use a bit of help to remember the value of good customer service. I’d like to show this post to people at my bank, my mortgage company and I would especially like to show this to people who work in retail stores. It doesn’t have to be difficult - something as simple as saying “Please” and “Thank You” can make people happier.